Don’t mess with Mother Nature

Mid-terms were over and it was a very cold December day in Arkansas. The year was 1960 and my husband and I packed our VW bus and, along with our 11-month-old son and a college friend, headed for Long Island, N.Y., to spend our Christmas vacation.

Before we could get out of Arkansas it began to rain. By the time we were driving through Indiana, it was beginning to sleet.

We were young and thought we had made adequate preparations for the long journey ahead, but were clueless as to how bad weather could upstage even the best made plans.

When we reached the Ohio Turnpike it began to snow. I thought it was beautiful. The soft snow falling on the landscape as we drove by looked every bit like the Christmas cards I had seen. Having grown up in Arkansas I hadn’t seen more than a few flakes of snow in my lifetime. When we did get any measurable amount it was gone by the next day.

The friend who hitched a ride with us helped with the driving and I sat in the back and cared for the baby. Everything was going according to plan and it was turning out to be a very uneventful trip. Of course, we had none of today’s electronic gadgets to rely on if any problem should arise.

As we left Ohio, we drove onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike and that’s where we spent the next 12 hours in the biggest snow blizzard of the century. The temperatures dipped to subzero and traffic slowed to a crawl. Then, they closed the Turnpike as all the fast food places along the way had run out of food and other supplies.

Our VW bus wasn’t the warmest place to be as it had an air cooled engine which didn’t offer much in the way of heat. Reality set in as we realized we were stranded along with thousands of others, including the OTR truckers. I don’t recall ever being that cold in my life.

We decided to pool our resources together and try to find a room for the night. The question was where? We saw a sign for Holiday Inn at the Harrisburg exit and were relieved as our supply of baby food and milk had run out. We secured the last room available only to find out the restaurant was closed as were all the others along the strip.

I was desperate, knowing I had to find food and milk for my baby. No one seemed to have any answers for us, so I took off looking for vending machines in the hotel. Most were empty, but I did find one that had an orange soda pop and a Milky Way candy bar. I quickly took them back to the room, filled the baby bottle with the Big Orange and gave it to my son, along with a few bites of the candy bar.

After getting warm, we slept in one bed with the baby between us and our friend slept in the other bed. It didn’t take long for us all to go to sleep and we didn’t wake up until 8 a.m. the next morning. By then the restaurant was open and we all had a good hot breakfast before starting out again. We were a “day late and a dollar short” by the time we reached Grandma’s house where it was warm and had a well stocked pantry, including birthday cake and ice cream for our baby boy’s first birthday.

One lesson learned that year… don’t mess with Mother Nature. If you plan a trip during the snow season, bundle up and make sure you have a Plan B.